Food that if one was really hungry, one would be more than happy to eat.

I run down a list of things I can make him, earning a resounding no at each one.
“I am not really that hungry,” he says after I list the last one.

I sigh.

He is, I know he is. He’s 13; he’s always hungry.

“You need to eat,” I tell him.

He insists he is not hungry.

We go through this almost daily.

The only thing he seems to never refuse is pizza or chicken nuggets. I tell him Wendy’s and Little Caesar’s are not food group items, no matter how much he protests.

“Then I guess I will just go hungry,” he says.

He knows this is the ultimate guilt trip to a mother, making me think my child is hungry.

I sit there and worry if he truly is hungry.

What if he is?

He has convinced me before he could not make it seven miles home without a honey bun and a Coke, or he’d succumb to low blood sugar. He was five at the time but made a strong case.

Again, I offer him things I think he will like.

Grilled cheese. How about chicken nuggets that were frozen?

He sighs and says he’s fine.

I think back to the food options I had when I was a child.

Normally I ate what Granny made or I could go hungry. That was it.

Sometimes, my uncle felt pity on me – especially if it was on nights Granny made some stinky oyster stew – and bought a kid’s meal at Dairy Queen for me, but that didn’t happen all the time.

I often had to suffer with the rest of them and eat just whatever it was that Granny made.

On some nights, it was delicious – her fried chicken was award worthy.

But some nights, like oyster stew night, choking it down was a challenge.

“Can I just eat a couple of Little Debbies?” I asked one night.

Granny glared at me as if I had just made a sacrilegious error.

“Do what?”

She heard me loud and clear; she was giving me time to correct my error.

My uncle was quick enough to shush me at the table and tell me to just eat it quietly.

Oyster stew was just one of the gross things she would try to force us to choke down.

Some odd monstrosity of beef chunks and vegetables in a gray gravy on slices of bread was another.

“Did this come out of the cat?” I asked, examining my plate closely.

She turned five shades of red.

“No, it didn’t come outta the dang cat!” she exclaimed.

I refused to eat it.

“What else do you have?” I asked.

“You can go hungry,” she said simply.

And, she meant it.

“And Bobby, if you go to the Brazier and get her a dadgum kid’s meal with a hot fudge sundae to reward her for not eating what I made, I will stomp a mud hole in your tail. You hear me?” she said.

My uncle lowered his eyes and whispered for me to eat what she made, and he would get me an ice cream later.

“She ain’t gonna starve,” Granny declared, probably referencing my rounded physique. “She needs to learn, sometimes you get what you get. And you are happy to get it. There’s children starving in other countries – heck, in this country, that would be happy to eat what I made.”

She was right. It may not have felt like it on the nights she made collards and cornbread, but she was.

The other night, I made something for dinner and my self-declared starving child crinkled up his nose and refused it.

“What else do you have?” he asked.

I know – he thought I would cook him something special like I have always, always done.

“This is all I made,” I said. “You can have this, or there’s peanut butter and jelly.”

The shock was evident.

“But, I don’t want either of those,” he said.

“I am so sorry,” I began. “Those are your options.”

“I’m starving!” he said. “You don’t have anything else?”
I said no.

“Can I order a pizza?”

No.

I felt like I was not only the worst mother in the world but that I was viciously mean, to boot.

Someone once commented that a person falling was one of the funniest things to see.

Granted, a lot of the video clips on American’s Funniest Videos feature people falling and some are kind of funny. Especially, when the person is doing something they should have known better about doing, like riding a skateboard down a flight of stairs.

But, it always made me cringe a little, especially when the fall looked like someone got hurt pretty badly.

Maybe it’s empathy.

Mama never let me take ballet lessons because I was not exactly the most sure footed and nimble child. Said the woman who cannot exit a movie theater without tumble rolling down the aisle.

When I tried out for cheerleading, I realized my mama was right in that I couldn’t discern my right from my left foot.

But somehow, somehow, I managed to walk easily in heels.

I would wear the highest heel I could find and somehow, never lost my footing.

“You’re gonna fall and break your darn neck,” Granny would warn.

“I walk better when I have on heels,” I would reply.

This made the old gal snort. “You either gonna fall, or you gonna end up with all kinds of varicose veins or foot problems. Shoes can be bad for your health if you get the wrong ones.”

Thankfully, I have somehow avoided both even though I wore four-inch heels while working retail for years. They made me feel graceful and elegant, as I had to be mindful of where I was stepping, lest I break a heel.

Heels were my friend. Wedges, on the other hand, another story.

“If a shoe is ever the death of me, it will be a wedge,” I said one day.

Mama was not sure what a wedge was.

“Remember espadrilles from the 70’s and 80’s, the shoes you never wore?” I reminded her, Mama favoring heels herself when she was younger.

She did.

“That was a wedge heel.”

“That’s a flat,” she said.

“Well, it’s kind of how a wedge heel is – flat across the bottom but it’s stacked up a little.”

Mama thought that was kind of silly. Either be a flat or be a heel. Probably part of the reason she never wore them.

“Why are they going to be the death of you?” she asked.

“Because, I can’t walk in them,” I replied.

I can’t.

A few years ago, I had a cute pair of silver espadrilles that I adored. They were comfortable and went well with jeans. I didn’t wear them very often but decided to wear them one Sunday.

As I walked in to pay for gas while Lamar stayed at the car with Cole, I tripped walking up on the sidewalk and stumbled. In an attempt to catch myself, I grabbed a trash can. A trash can with wheels on it. I proceeded to be propelled down the sidewalk while holding on to the trash can like it was a lifeline. I hoped it would crash into the ice machine and I would stop in an upright position.

That did not happen, of course.

Somehow, the trash can veered off the sidewalk, spilling all of its messy contents in the parking lot and delivering me face down in front of the gas station doors.

A man opened the door to exit, bumping my prone body with it slightly. He grunted at me and then stepped over me. He didn’t even offer to help me to my feet.

“I fell,” I said as I got back in the car.

“I saw that,” Lamar said.
“And you didn’t come to help?” I cried.
“Not much I could do. I thought you were moving the trash can to the other side of the store for some reason. Didn’t know until the end there you were falling,” he said.

I threw those shoes away the minute I got home.

You’d think I would have learned my lesson.

Flash forward about seven years later, and I found a pair of wedge sandals I thought would be cute for the summer. They would give be a bit of much needed height and look casual or sporty when needed.

I wore them once.

Once was enough.
Even as I sat in church, I thought to myself, these shoes are not that easy to walk in.

I should have worn heels.

As I walked across the street to the car, the wedge sandals met uneven pavement and down I went.

I was temporarily parking lot road kill.

When Lamar finally managed to scoop me up, I was a bloody, sobbing mess.

“Do you want to go to the emergency room?” he asked me.

I told him no, hoping it was just a horrible sprain.

I had to tell Mama, of course.
“If it’s broke, she will hurt bad enough to go get it checked out,” my uncle said.

I did and it was.

A hairline fracture on my funny bone, and there was nothing funny about it.

Not the bone or the fall.

Granny was right; the wrong shoe could be detrimental to your health. In this case, it was a wedge instead of a stiletto.

About a year or so ago, there was a scientific study released that determined nagging mothers raised highly successful daughters.

I am not sure where they got their study pool or what they used as their definition of “nagging,” but I would like to declare myself an outlier to this study.

If nagging had anything to do with it, I would be the Queen of the Universe. Or at the very least, CEO or Grand Poo-bah of something magnificent.

I had a double dose of nagging from both my crazy redheads.

Between the two of them, I had all my bases covered.

Granny had her own subjects to nag me about.

There had better not be any pre-made cake mixes in my cabinets and biscuits didn’t come in a can.

Thankfully, the old gal didn’t nag about housework. She hated it herself and stated matter-of-factly that she was allergic, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

“But you ought to make your bed in the morning,” she stated one day, casting a glance towards mine.

“Why? I am just gonna get back in it later.”

She grunted at me. “That logic makes no sense. Make your dang bed. Smart people make their bed after they get up.”

Where she heard this, I don’t know. Since then, it has been heralded as some indicator of success by some noted people. I am sure if she was alive, she would take credit for stating it first.

Iron your clothes, wear a slip, break in your shoes before you wear them were other nag-full reminders I received.

Sit up straight, sit like a lady, don’t smack your gum, say thank you – did you say thank you?

Call your mother when you go somewhere. Call your mother when you get home. If you don’t want to call your mother, let someone know where you’re going and expecting to be home.

Along with: do your homework and don’t wait until the last minute to do it. Chances are, you may run into an issue and need more time. Don’t miss a class, don’t count on someone else’s notes, and do your work well the first time. Measure twice, cut once.

Both of them drilled this into my head constantly.

When Mama drove me nuts, I went to Granny for coffee and sympathy.

She just gave me coffee.

“She’s trying to raise you right, lit’l un,” she told me. “And it is taking both of us to do it.”

“Did you nag her like this?” I cried.

Granny sipped her coffee. “I did. I tried to. She’s stubborn – that’s where you get it from.”
I am not so sure about that, I think stubborn is a genetic trait in the women in my family along with the freckles.

“She didn’t listen to me, just like you don’t listen to either one of us,” she continued. “Your mama is incredibly smart, she just always thought she was smarter than me or your grandfather and could do her own thing. She could be running AT&T if she had of listened to me.”

No doubt if a nagging mother could nag her daughter all the way to success, Mama could have been a telecommunication maven. But she didn’t really aspire to that. When she was offered a new position, she turned it down because it would have meant a longer commute or a move, and less time with me. The success was right within her reach, but, Mama was happy where she was.

I wish I knew what that was like. I am always feeling that restless spirit that things could, should be better than they are.

Anytime I complain about life not being the way I want it to be, Mama loves to remind me it could have been – had I only heeded her nagging.

“This is when I should maybe tell you I told you so,” she will say not so gently. “But you never listen to me or do what I tell you. If you had, there’s no telling where you’d be now. You probably would be a millionaire and retired.”

I let out a deep sigh.

She always thinks if I had only listened to her, I would be a millionaire.

Maybe she’s right.

If that study was any indication, I should be a millionaire made over, have an empire to rival Oprah’s, and maybe own my own small country.

I find myself nagging my son now, telling him some of the same things I received as a child.
Make your bed, read something new every day, say thank you – did you say thank you?

What are you going to be when you grow up? An engineer? You sure you don’t want to be a lawyer?

He sighs. “I know, Mama, you don’t have to stay on me about this.”
“Yes, I do, too,” I say. “If I had listened to Mama, there’s no telling how different my life would be right now.”

He rolls his eyes – where does he get that eye-rolling from? Oh, right. Me.

I pray he never tells Mama that little tidbit. She will never let me live it down.

A nagging mother leads to successful daughters; I wonder what the outcome is with nagging mothers and sons.

I knew she was overprotective; I was her only child after all. But I never realized just how much a mother had to worry about until I became a mother myself.

The minute I held that little swaddled lump, I instantly knew life was no longer the same.

Things that I didn’t even give a second thought were suddenly terrifying and anxiety producing.

I did all the child-proofing imagined, crawling around on my hands and knees, looking at things from not just the eyes of a curious child, but from the perspective of a mother seeing possible dangers.

I had to make sure food was cut into pieces that would not choke, the laundry detergent I used on his clothes had to be dye-and allergen free, and I worried about the ingredients in the baby food.

I worried about everything. I still do.

Mama understood; she has lived a life of worry since I was born.

Granny, however, had no sympathy for me.

“You think you are the first mother that ever worried?” she asked me one day. “You ain’t. You don’t know worry.”

“I do know worry,” I said. “How can you possibly know the depths of my worry?”

I was in for an earful.

“How can I know anything about worry?” she began. “I will tell you what I know about worry. I gave birth to a child that didn’t live to his first birth day. That’s a pain you never get over.

Then, your uncle was in Viet Nam.” She shook her head, remembering that time period. “My child, my baby, was over in a foreign country fighting. And in the middle of that, your mama nearly died. She has only one functioning kidney, and it shut down on her when she was pregnant with you.

The doctors told me she had a 1 in 100 chance of making it through the surgery, and your chances depended on if she made it,” she said, her voice solemn as she lost some of her normal constant anger as she relived these previous experiences. “And that’s just a small fraction of what I have worried about. You think you are the only mother that worries? You don’t know the half of it.”

I was quiet as I digested all of this. I had heard all of this before, countless times, over the course of growing up. This was just the first time I had heard it in the framework of being a parent myself and how that must have felt.

“How did you do it?” I asked. “How did you get through all of that?”

She let out a deep breath, as if releasing the weight of the world. “I prayed. I think I prayed from the time I found out I was pregnant with my first child and I haven’t stopped. And I won’t stop until my last breath, either.

When Bobby was in Viet Nam, all I could do was pray. I couldn’t go over there with him – if they would have let me, I would have. Believe me. But I prayed all the time. Some people’s kids didn’t come home.”

Her voice caught a little and she paused to re-center herself. “When your mama nearly died, I had to make a decision no parent should have to make. For the doctor to try to save one of you. I told him you both would make it.”
“How did you know?” I asked.

“I just did. I had to remember that God doesn’t put more on us than we can handle. And I figured the good Lord knew I couldn’t handle me losing either one of you.”

Granny had always been honest with everything she said; a trait that was a blessing and a curse, depending on which way she was driving her message home. But this was the most vulnerable she had ever been.

“It’s just part of being a mother,” she said.

“The worry?”

“That,” she said. “And finding your faith. You may think you’ve got it before, but you spend more time in prayer when you become a mother than you ever thought possible.”

She was right. I think I have spent the majority of the last 13 plus years praying, with just about everything I say being some form of prayer.

I seemed to remember Granny praying as she took me to school. It wasn’t a big production, it was just something she did as we made our way through town. I didn’t think anything of it when I was little but have found myself doing it now.

Granny wasn’t the only one who prayed. Mama did, too, and, still does.

It wasn’t something I heard her do until I was a teenager, and then in the stillness of the night, I heard her prayers when she thought I was asleep.

That first time I heard her pray was before I had back surgery. I was scared but can’t even imagine how scared she was.

She was terrified but didn’t want me to know. Hearing her prayers made me wonder if I needed to be more scared than I was.

“Mama, am I going to be OK?” I asked.

She smiled as she rubbed my head. “Yes, Kitten, you are going to be just fine.”

“I’m scared,” I told her. “Are you scared, Mama?”

She smiled again. “No, Kitten. I know you will be fine.”

She was lying, of course.

Another thing I have learned about being a mama is, you lie like crazy when you are frantic with fear because you want to spare your child from a second of worry.

From that point on, her prayers only seemed to increase. She prayed I never got hurt, she prayed when I was commuting in college, she prayed when I started working in Athens.

She prayed when I moved away from home and prayed when I didn’t move back.

One of her texts the other day, she just simply wrote, “Praying for you today.”

Somehow, in the middle of my anxiety, that gave me peace and comfort.

I think sometimes, as our children get older, we pray more because the problems get bigger.

As mothers, it’s hard to let go, even the tiniest bit. Sometimes, it feels like we are giving up any control we may have.

It also feels like the scariest thing to do, especially in the world we live in now.

It wasn’t a word I have thought much about in a while but when it was brought to my attention, I realized it is a word I needed to pay attention to.

This one little word may have been the redheaded duo’s favorite word.

“Your biscuits were good,” Granny began, “But, they were too big.”

“How can a biscuit being too big be a bad thing?” I demanded to know.

She looked at me with disgust. How dare I defy anything she declared as fact?
“Because they are. Your sausage patty is only so big. What are you going to do with the leftover biscuit?”

“I make my biscuits for butter and honey,” I said.

She snorted. “Of course you do. But, normal folks like sausage and none of that vegetarian nonsense.”

I wanted to tell her I wasn’t even a vegetarian anymore, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

“You did good on that test, but,” –

“I like your new haircut, but,” –

“Your house looks nice, but,” –

I have learned to not only dread but wait for the but.

The but that comes to let me know that whatever compliment had been previously given was about to be taken away.

Granny was famous for it.

Mama, as kind hearted as she is, is much more subtle with her but.

And even though I am 45, I want Mama’s approval.

Some things, she is easy to please.

Others, she can hold me to task more than Granny and would probably impress the old gal.

Where Granny was critical about cooking, Mama reserves her negating for things I do to my hair.

“Your hair is cute,” she began one day. “But why did you want to color it red.”

“I was paying homage to the crazy redheads in my family,” I replied.
“Hmmm,” she demurred. “But, difference is, we are natural redheads, Kitten. You are a natural brunette. Stick with what God gave you.”

“If that was the case, I would be bald, Mama. And so would you.”

She also doesn’t understand some of my other life choices.

“It’s wonderful you went back to school, but,” – here it comes – “I don’t know why you didn’t go to law school. Probably because I wanted you to.”

I sighed. It was hard to endure the buts. I was given a compliment only to be followed by something that completely wiped out the previous praise.

I cringe when I hear that word, so I cringe a lot; it’s said by everyone.

Including myself.

I didn’t notice how much I said it until I realized how much I hated it – kind of ironic, isn’t it?

I would thank my husband for doing something and throw a ‘but’ in there.
Mama would ask me if I liked whatever she got me, and I had something to undercut it.

‘But’ was everywhere.

I wondered how different our perspective would be if instead of trying to find flaw with something, we just focused on the positives of a situation.

I know when I hear the but, I immediately anticipate some criticism coming. And after the but is uttered, I don’t focus on the things I did right or the praises; instead, I focus on the one thing that I did wrong.

The but is a great big minus sign, taking away any good we may have done and tend to put us on the defensive.

I decided I needed to try to limit my buts unless they were absolutely necessary.

Cole decided to help clean one day.

I hadn’t asked him, he just did it because he knew I had so much to do.

So, he washed the dishes and folded laundry.

“Mama, I wanted to help. Did I do it OK?” he asked when he finished.

The laundry was not folded the way I like. I have always had a thing about how my towels are folded.

I prefer the dishes to be stacked a certain way to air dry.

“Yeah, but,” – I caught myself.

“But what?” he asked. The minute he heard the but, his expression fell a little.
“I don’t have any cash to give you for helping,” I said.